Welcoming Jesus, Our Neighbor

A Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church, First Advent Sunday 2007 at the Hampton, Inn, Barboursville, WV


Epigraph:
The Advent journey is an invitation to climb the mountain of the Lord. The journey consists of a slow, gradual ascending up the mountain path. As with all uphill climbing, there are certain dangers along the way, but also the joyful expectation of one day reaching the mountaintop that is the house of the Lord.
Br. Victor Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette

Isaiah 2:1-5 The Mountain of the Lord
2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter daysthat the mountain of the house of the Lordshall be established as the highest of the mountains,and shall be lifted up above the hills;and all the nations shall flow to it,3 and many peoples shall come, and say:“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,to the house of the God of Jacob,that he may teach us his waysand that we may walk in his paths.”For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.4 He shall judge between the nations,and shall decide disputes for many peoples;and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation,neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob,come, let us walkin the light of the Lord.

About Advent (From introduction of Advent and Christmas : Wisdom from Henri JM Nowen:

“The four weeks of Advent are often thought of as symbolizing the four different ways that Christ comes into the world: 1) at his birth as a helpless infant in Bethlehem; 2) at his arrival in the hearts of believers; 3) at his death; and 4) at his arrival on Judgment Day.”

“Because Christmas falls on a different day of the week each year, the fourth week of Advent is never really finished; it is abruptly, joyously, and solemnly abrogated by the annual coming again of Christ at Christmas. Christ’s Second Coming will also one day abruptly interrupt our sojourn here on earth.”


Today we want to focus on how Christ comes to the World in the form of our neighbors.

Courses in Neighboring?

Author Robert Lupton tells of being invited to speak at the ‘urban emphasis’ week at a well-known Christian College. He posed the question to a group of upperclassmen, “What is the number-one mandate for the followers of Christ?”

Evangelize! was one student’s immediate response, citing the Great Commission from Matthew 28. When he pushed the students harder to think about what Jesus actually said was the most important mandate, one of the students tentatively answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thine heart, mind, soul and strength and they neighbor as thyself?”

Agreeing with the student, Lupton went on to ask the question, “Given that Scripture declares this to be our number-one mandate, then what courses do you have here on neighboring?...Who teaches neighboring 101?” From Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, pp 15, 16.

It’s a startling thought: our number one mandate from Christ is to love God, and then love our neighbors as ourselves. Our lesson from Romans reinforces this message. “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom. 13:8-10).

Too often, says Lupton, we have viewed our primary task as ‘saving souls’. The problem is that people are not disembodied souls, they are a complete package of body, soul and spirit. “When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith,’ says Lupton (pg. 16). A …Church that skips over these basics on the way to ‘deeper’ theological pursuits can hardly be considered biblically faithful”, he asserts. (Also noting that he hasn’t been invited back to speak at the school in question…)

Tie-in with Advent

Christ comes into the world as a little baby. He comes as a stranger: a neighbor who could find no room in the inn and no one to welcome him and his family. Our challenge is to find room in our hearts for Jesus, our neighbor, in addition to Jesus our Savior and Lord. Christ comes to us in the form of our neighbors, just as Benedict asserts in his rule “Every visitor shall be welcomed as if they were Christ.”

We should love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is the concrete proof of the existence of the Unseen Real. It is an argument for the existence of God that catches people off-guard. As David Frederick is fond of saying, “There is no defense against love.”

Christ comes into the world in flesh, Incarnates God’s love to us. We are to incarnate God’s love to the world. Even the World acknowledges that we should care about hour neighbors in a special way during this season. The Charleston Gazette and other papers run features about helping the neediest families at Christmas. But as the Church caring about our neighbors is to be our constant emphasis; something we do year-round.

Love and the Second Coming

One of the themes of Advent is the coming of the Kingdom of God into our world, and looking for the return of Christ.
37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man… 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming… 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Mt. 24:37-44).
And: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand.” Rom. 13: 11-12.
While we do indeed look for the bodily return of our Lord, loving one’s neighbor brings the Kingdom into this world, it Realizes the unseen kingdom, brings into the Now the “Eschaton” or “last things”. Therefore, by loving your neighbors, you are helping God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Neighboring initiative

The Lord desires to use us as his hands and feet in this project of loving our neighbors.

Over the course of the last several months it has become increasingly clear that we need to start pull together a separate board for Hope House in order to broaden our reach and help us to accomplish our goals. But it is also apparent to me that having the house affords us an opportunity to reach out in other ways to the poor and needy. This would include opportunities to collaborate with various organizations in our anti-drug message, to invest in the neighborhood around Hope House through the development of such things as food co-ops, real-estate development, job assistance, etc.

Therefore, a group of us from the vestry are now in the process of researching the formation of a separate 501C3 organization to allow us to do some of these things. In thinking about the structure of such an organization, it seems to me that we need an umbrella corporation that would give us the freedom to do several things eventually and that Hope House is just the first project among many eventual project.

I have been very impressed with Lupton’s idea of ‘neighboring’.
In his book, he cites a number of examples where the wider community often opposes the plans of a church because ultimately the plan is not good for the neighborhood. For example, a church wants to buy and raze a whole block of houses to make room for a parking lot. The parking lot in turn is full of cars from people who don’t live in the neighborhood and who aren’t invested in it. Efforts by the church do not contribute to the integrity of the neighborhood, either because projects run people off or because the local neighbors are not engaged.

We faced this ourselves with Hope House because some of our neighbors were concerned that we would come into the area, try to get money and assets for our church and then take off, leaving the area worse than when we found it. The church, especially in Huntington, WV faces much cynicism thanks to some charlatans who have taken advantage of people before we ever arrived.

Therefore, I have proposed that we consider starting a faith-based organization called “The Neighboring Initiative.”

The Neighboring Initiative would seek to be a vehicle for community development on a community scale. Its guiding principle would be “Is it good for the neighborhood? Is it good for my neighbors? And by this, we in turn imply that what is good for neighborhoods is for people to be empowered or challenged to do for things themselves, not simply to have ministry inflicted upon them.

Some potential slogans for such a group might be:

“Challenging neighbors to love one another as themselves.”

“Empowering neighbors to work together to preserve their communities.”

“Reaching out to our neighbors for the Love of Christ.”

Fulfilling the Great Commission one relationship at a time

Hope house is an attempt to reach out and love our neighbors through ministering to specific needs – comforting those who mourn (Is 61: 1-2) and warning the young to avoid the danger and foolishness of drug use. But during Advent we also have some other ways of reaching out to our neighbors.

Other ways to love our neighbors

Currently, we meet in Barboursville. Our neighbor is the Veteran’s Home. Last year we took up a collection of items for the Vets, and I would propose that we do something similar this year, collecting lap blankets, throws, personal care items, etc for those who actually live at the Center. We could take these things up to the Center after Church on the 16th of December.

Another personal prayer project would be to join thousands of other people in praying for peace and safety in our neighborhoods, our cities and our country. Many have joined an effort called One Minute for Peace. The idea is to stop what you are doing each evening at 9pm and pray for one minute for the peace and well-being of our country.
I would strongly suggest we do this. Having participated for many months with Mission Tri-State pastors in praying for the Mayor of Huntington and for safety in the Tri-State area, I am convinced that prayer does indeed change things.

Finally, I’d like to close with a prayer from my good friend Audley Kilburn. Almost every time we pray at Hope House Audley prays this or something very close. Listen closely and see if you can catch the spirit of the prayer. You might also hear the faint rustle of angel wings as they join in with praise to our God.

Audley’s Prayer: let there be love joy and peace all throughout these neighborhoods. Take away the drugs and the violence O Lord, take away the love of money and turn the hearts of the people to you Lord. In Christes (sic) sure and holy name, Amen.